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DOS Subsystem for Linux

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Re: DOS Subsystem for Linux

#151

Post by fomine3 »

city41 wrote: post #90
iherbig wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would imagine it's because WSL is a terribly confusing name itself for a lot of people. There are two ways to read "Windows Subsystem for Linux": 1. This is a subsystem that runs on Windows that enables Linux binaries. 2. This is a subsystem that runs on Linux that enables Windows binaries. The confusion comes in the fact that when I write those two sentences, I naturally want to write "This is a subsystem FOR Wind…

As bad as the original name was, "Bash on Ubuntu on Windows", I think it was still better than WSL.

It's worse because it can run other distros and shells. hell.

Re: DOS Subsystem for Linux

#152

Post by ogre_codes »

Aperocky wrote: post #150
ogre_codes wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Next up is Microsoft's browser: Windows Subsystem for HTML

Have you heard of the HTML5 supercomputer? https://twitter.com/Html5Nikola

Maybe he should be in charge of naming at Microsoft, can't do worse

Re: DOS Subsystem for Linux

#153

Post by anthk »

incanus77 wrote: post #105
derekp7 wrote: post #14

If I recall correctly, there was at one time a Linux boot loader that ran from DOS, which could make use of DOS device drivers. I recall using Yggdrasil Linux which had an option to boot this way, which used the DOS driver for my SCSI card and CDROM drive to make it available under Linux.

Still is: http://distro.ibiblio.org/baslinux/ I'm using it currently on a 386SX with 8MB of RAM (not to post this, however). Edit: Ah, this doesn't do the driver bit. But it works pretty well in itself.

Well, if you were connected by ssh or even telnet to some pubnix, you could post there through lynx :D

Re: DOS Subsystem for Linux

#155

Post by necovek »

thrownaway954 wrote: post #64

i saw a youtube video the other day entitled "why learn asm in 2020", i guess for doing something like this. this project looks really cool. i don't hear a whole lot of people using dos nowadays but for a tinkering around that would be awesome. hats off to the author. it's amazing one dude could code this.

In a way, DOS was a perfect platform to learn tinkering with. .COM files were basically pure machine code, and DOS would execute them directly.

Re: DOS Subsystem for Linux

#156

Post by zhte415 »

reaperducer wrote: post #88
rcoveson wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're both phrased unnaturally, IMO. The suffix "for Linux" strongly implies it's software for use on Linux. It's like the "4j" and "4win" suffixes, implying software built for the Java and Windows environments, respectively. What's more, Windows or DOS as an adjective of subsystem bind more tightly than "for Linux". So if you were to start dropping parts of the name, you'd drop "for Linux" first. Except you can't,…

They're both phrased unnaturally, IMO. This is why we teach sentence diagramming in elementary school. Maybe the person who came up with "WSL" wasn't a native English-speaker?

And then one learns Shakespeare in secondary school where all that 'sensible' diagramming and rigidity jumps out of the window.

Re: DOS Subsystem for Linux

#157

Post by exikyut »

haileys wrote: post #35
kentonv wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this explained somewhere? I'd love to read how it works (without trying to understand the source code).

Author here. I am planning to do an in depth write up of how this works, but it seems Hacker News found it sooner :) When DSL is first invoked at the command line it boots up the Linux kernel which takes over control of the computer from DOS. Now here’s the trick: DSL makes use of a processor feature called VM8086 which allows for a 32 bit operating system to run legacy 16 bit code mostly natively. This feature is ho…

After not finding much of a README (yet), I poked around the source code a few minutes ago. Thanks for my actually confirming my initial "...he can't be doing it that way, surely..." :)

This is nice. It reminds me of the IPL sequence of some mainframe OS I sadly can't remember right now (might be System/i?) where the bootloader that launched the kernel was a first-class OS process that went from running the entire system to being promoted to an OS task as the kernel started up. Except in this case you're promoting the entire OS to a kernel task, while the promoted OS continues to run :D

I wonder if you could extend this to turn Linux into a replacement for HIMEM.SYS, to "properly" support the fact that HIMEM has to be disabled. :D

(Immediately after reading that I thought "wait; the two OSes are running independently, of course that won't work..." but then I realized, no, HIMEM works by trapping interrupts... so this is not only possible, but vm86 of course works by handing you interrupts to deal with.)

The extremely-confusing-but-still-positive benefit of this would be to allow you to elevate DOS to have demand-paged virtual memory, complete with swapfile.

It might be interesting to identify the oldest kernel version(s) you're prepared to put up with, to realize the smallest _in-memory_ kernel size possible, and _possibly_ enable running multi-MB applications on real systems with only 640KB of RAM (with the proviso that using an SSD via a SATA-IDE adapter would give the best results - and the rationale that both of those items will soon be cheaper than old DIMMs). The issue suggesting 2.4 is maybe a bit of a stretch, but the early 2.6 trees might be interesting.

Re: DOS Subsystem for Linux

#158

Post by Thorrez »

Aperocky wrote: post #150
ogre_codes wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Next up is Microsoft's browser: Windows Subsystem for HTML

Have you heard of the HTML5 supercomputer? https://twitter.com/Html5Nikola

If it's an HTML5-based device that runs Windows[1] then it's "HTML5 Subsystem for Windows" going by Microsoft's phrase structure.

[1] https://copy.sh/v86/?profile=windows98

Re: DOS Subsystem for Linux

#159

Post by JdeBP »

dm319 wrote: post #109
iherbig wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would imagine it's because WSL is a terribly confusing name itself for a lot of people. There are two ways to read "Windows Subsystem for Linux": 1. This is a subsystem that runs on Windows that enables Linux binaries. 2. This is a subsystem that runs on Linux that enables Windows binaries. The confusion comes in the fact that when I write those two sentences, I naturally want to write "This is a subsystem FOR Wind…

Also, why linux? Linux is the kernel, which is not what is being run, more like everything on a gnu/linux system apart from linux.

As I pointed out when WSL came out, the name always includes the thing that is being replaced by the Windows NT kernel: be that OS/2 or Linux.

* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11417059

* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18948258

Re: DOS Subsystem for Linux

#160

Post by zapzupnz »

reaperducer wrote: post #88
rcoveson wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're both phrased unnaturally, IMO. The suffix "for Linux" strongly implies it's software for use on Linux. It's like the "4j" and "4win" suffixes, implying software built for the Java and Windows environments, respectively. What's more, Windows or DOS as an adjective of subsystem bind more tightly than "for Linux". So if you were to start dropping parts of the name, you'd drop "for Linux" first. Except you can't,…

They're both phrased unnaturally, IMO. This is why we teach sentence diagramming in elementary school. Maybe the person who came up with "WSL" wasn't a native English-speaker?

It's Microsoft. They came up with Xbox, Xbox 360, Xbox One, Xbox One X, and now Xbox Series X. WSL is a drop in the bucket of stupid naming schemes.
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